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Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

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Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#101

Post by thenoblesunfish »

pennaMan wrote: post #93

Quoted post unavailable.

It's an organization that receives donations based on people's perception of them as ethical. This move is intended to communicate the values of the organization, as (at least according to this RFC), their community considers accepting cryptocurrency to give the wrong message.

An interesting tangent here is whether the fundamentally relevant thing about cryptocurrency is technology or ideology/politics. I'd probably argue the latter - the tech is cool, but I don't think it's cool enough to fully explain the appeal of the idea.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#102

Post by [deleted] »

bb88 wrote: post #66
mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

> Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a a platform for pump and dumps. and > Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. It seems like the first paragraph you said would be enough of a reason to n…

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#103

Post by AlexAltea »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

This is great news, it is pretty pointless to use cryptocurrencies at all anyway since for Wikipedia: > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels. Remember that Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites on the planet, I'm also assuming that other websites trying to accept crypto have even smaller percentages rendering cryptocurrencies as payment useless, not t…

> What is really happening is that nobody is using it for payments at all

[Citation needed]

Over the past years I've been able to book flights, shop hardware, get hotels and rental cars, renew my domain, pay for my server with cryptocurrencies.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#105

Post by secretsatan »

mardifoufs wrote: post #75
secretsatan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Explain? I'm not trying to be offensive or mean, it's just that the reasons given for the RFC had little to do with Wikimedia and reminded me of a typical moral crusade. For example, when they say that it is a huge stain on wikimedia's reputation when the reality is that they started accepted crypto donations 8 years ago with absolutely no controversy (a part from this one)... that to me reeks of projection when almo…

[flagged]

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#106

Post by JulianMorrison »

cycomanic wrote: post #98

I find many of the replies here fascinating. On one hand whenever there is talk about government regulating some industry or actor a large portion of commenter here reply that if you don't agree with the practice don't use them, no regulation needed. Now an organisation does exactly that, they decide that they don't want to use a "service" that they ethically disagree with, and lots of replies call it pointless virtu…

It's disingenuous arguing. Free association for me, no cancelling for you, amounts to a plea for a get-out-of-Coventry-free card.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#107

Post by sennight »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #82
sennight wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...vested interest in it succeeding. That has led to a lot of people who have annoyingly strong opinions about it. Cryptobro-splainer here. Having been involved from the beginning, I can tell you that detractors (especially vocal ones) are far more invested than proponents. Imagine declaring bitcoin dead in 2014, and then again the next year, and then the next... and while this is going on you can't help but calcul…

I don't see any detractors claiming that cryptocurrencies will be dead in any timeframe. They are arguing that they are useless and ponzi schemes, but it's very well known that market and people can stay irrational way longer than any bet.

You must not be paying attention then, because many detractors have made the claim repeatedly. It would be funny if it wasn't clearly the result of a predictable feedback loop. I'm really not interested in skylining one particular individual, but if you are genuinely interested in understanding what is happening: pick any one of the many tech writers appearing in the multitude of obituary compilations, then pull up their twitter timeline and observe their increasingly venomous attacks on cryptocurrency over the years.

With regard to them being useless: that argument falls apart very quickly when challenged. Unless you actually believe that software agents won't cause a massive economic shift, and that a weaponized financial system is really a good thing that brings stability. As far as it being a "ponzi scheme", a pump and dump, a tulip mania, a beanie-baby fad, etc... Just look at the time scale for a big clue as to why such an argument is laughable.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#108

Post by ketzu »

derevaunseraun wrote: post #77

I'm not a cryptobro, but this annoying ass attitude is gonna turn me into one I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change

> I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change

My personal guess is that we would recreate most of the infrastructure on top, but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments. The consequences for the world at large would be interesting to explore.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#109

Post by gwd »

numeri wrote: post #50
flotzam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia used BitPay, the most widely loathed of all cryptocurrency payment processors - https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ - and required prospective donors to provide an obscene amount of personal data: https://bitpay.com/464448/donate It's a high friction, culture-clashing payment flow. I certainly noped out of that form real fast. For comparison: https://www.givedirectly.org/crypto/ And another campaign on…

This is the real reason they received so few donations. I've only ever donated to them through Brave's Attention Tokens [1], so I never realized they use BitPay, but it really is intrusive. 1. I wonder if they'll keep this enabled or not?

> 1. I wonder if they'll keep this enabled or not?

I was wondering the same thing -- hopefully they will, as I'd like to see that model succeed.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#110

Post by dragonwriter »

mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

> It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd.

Charities, unlike for-profit businesses, tend to be moral ventures. Refusing donations, modes of operation, etc., for reasons that seem to be “asinine moral purity tests” for anyone with different moral views than the decision-makers is...pretty par for the course.

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